The eventual victor appears to be the Jamaat-e-Islami, with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) acceding ground. Yet, it remains unclear against whom our criticism ought to be directed. The Jamaat’s demand for a return to the 2002 school curriculum developed under the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal regime and its doctrinaire emphasis on the espousal of a certain ideology is unsurprising. In the words of the K-P Minister for Local Government Inayatullah Khan, the Jamaat’s call extends only to the re-inclusion of the subject matter allegedly expunged from school curricula under the previous ANP provincial government: principles of jihad, theories of creationism articulated in Quranic verses and an emphasis on the Two-Nation Theory.
The PTI may have put up some resistance against the Jamaat’s educational agenda, or at least the protests registered by the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba and the JUI-F certainly suggest so.
As a result, young children in K-P, to state one instance, will no longer be exposed in their textbooks to the culturally aberrant image of ‘girls in skirts’, to be replaced now by the more acceptable depiction of a girl child donning the head cover. The Jamaat’s concern, it is argued, is the development of a school curriculum reflective of the culture and ideology of Pakistan.
While the actual nature and the exigencies of such compromise remain uncertain and debatable, this debacle has clearly highlighted the ideological exploitation by political forces of the state’s authority over the process of education. An ideologically driven state educational agenda is problematic. Its end is defined and is thereby assessed in terms of the degree of conformity and adherence to a particular ideology, politics or belief system that it is able to engender in the young minds it educates. History is tweaked, images altered, literature selected, all to reinforce and perpetuate a particular mindset.
That school education is a powerful tool capable of fashioning student’s beliefs and attitudes is widely acknowledged. A recent study conducted by the US National Bureau of Economic Research has concluded a direct causal effect of the school curricula introduced by the Communist Party of China from 2004 to 2010 on children’s political, social and religious views.
We are all too familiar with the tailored lessons in political and religious history fed to us through school. The selective and often obscure account of the 1971 war and the subsequent secession of Bangladesh and the complete erasure of the Jamaat’s opposition to Partition of the subcontinent are just some instances of the skewed instruction, which has modelled us into the conforming nationalists our education system sought to produce.
A pre-occupation with feminine virtue is again not unique to the Jamaat’s educational agenda. Studies of school texts published over the years in Pakistan demonstrate the elevation of obedience, domesticity and docility in women, thereby laying down acceptable boundaries of gender roles in society. Yet surely, the purpose of education goes beyond such mental fashioning? What of intellectual growth, curiosity and critical thinking? An ideologically driven curriculum may still be informed by such objectives, but positions them only second to its higher prioritisation of conformity.
What do we lose out from such instruction? Indoctrinated through a selective account of our values and our past, we are made intolerant of diversity and difference, robbed of the capacity to reason, to critique existing power structures and conceive our surroundings in a creative fashion. The deployment of ideological education as an instrument of nation-building may not be unknown even in states which term themselves secular. But where the processes of education are ideologically determined, the objective of human development is put on the back burner, at great loss to the developing minds of a state.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 4th, 2014.
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COMMENTS (9)
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This is a most delightful piece of writing, especially because it comes from someone in the noble and enlightened profession of law in Pakistan. It is possible to see that the author’s education has had a decisive influence on her intellectual preferences. We in India have had our counterparts who have attempted to rewrite history and to present to us the story of civilization that we failed to recognize. But that’s where similarity ceases. In effect, attempts to re-mould young minds in a specific way seem to be under way in both the countries. There is no doubt that the phase of Islamization that set in with that mullah-in-uniform Ziaul Haq has gone a long way in conditioning the minds of the young and that the trends that began with him were not reversed or amended by any of his successors – no exceptions. So, then, what could we expect? Surely the result was a crop of minds that were a sell out to what you called “principles of jihad, theories of creationism articulated in Quranic verses and an emphasis on the Two-Nation Theory”. It amounted to absolute disaster, from which there seems to be no escape in sight. The whole thing is anti-common sense. It is important that we read our past accurately in order that we may derive education from it that may help us to avoid errors of the past. But whether in India or Pakistan, this is a cry in the wilderness. Who will listen to the voices of reason? We shall probably be written down as candidates for the nearest lunatic asylum. V. C. Bhutani, Delhi, ex-Rawalpindi, 75 years old, retired teacher, 7 Nov 2014, 1922 IST
My grandparents were "uneducated" but in reality they were more educated than the people of today. My grandparents education was a oral history based on real experience passed down the generations. We now live in a time where television and the school curricula is pumping us up with with lies and propaganda. All this real history is being sacrificed to manufacture a new paranoid Pakistani identify.
@amna: What about the 'culture' of honour killings? Should that be accepted too?
Any party be that religious, political or a hybrid; if given a taste of too much power or given a stature that makes them 'too important' will always resist any move that weakens their position or reduces their authority. There is no other way but to question them and when required, take a stand against them.
Excellent writeup I must say. Great writing skills. You summarized subject matter very well.
Why are we forgetting the culture of KP itself ?
@Raza Rashid where did you see girls in short skirts in our text books. the issue was only pictures of girl children with uncovered heads. the JI has a narrow minded agenda that does not get any support even in conservative KP. it is sad that PTI accepted pressure and succumbed to the demands of JI whose agenda considering the number of seats they got in the provincial assembly was clearly rejected by the people.
Interesting piece. I have a point regarding your idea of cultural conformity though. Something like the image of a girl in a textbook can be linked as promotion/glorification of a specific ideology no matter what she's wearing. eg. If she wears a hijab she's a tradiitonal muslim but if she's wearing short skirts she's promoting western influences. I think finding a middle ground in this sort of debate is very difficult since everything in an academic syllabus can be ambigious and motives can be found behind it, even if they dont exist. So it definitely makes more sense if they girl wears something more indigenous to the local culture, since the feedback or resistence to that will be nowhere as hard as with a girl wearing short skirts. I dont believe it limits anyones thinking if they see a girl wearing traditional clothes in their textbooks. we dont see people wearing hijabs in standard western textbooks do we? would you say that they too promote a narrow minded and shallow agenda?
That was a great read and I'd agree with what you said especially at the end. The difference between the PTI and its policy to concede ground and the JI is that the PTI is sadly thinking short term.....while the JI has long term planning and strategy. Today Bangladesh has not only realised the downside of this but they are doing something about it.